While the community struggles to find a solution for skateboarders and neighbors at the new Summit/John park — more on that soon — Monday night brings an opportunity to show your support for a project to enhance the new park by converting a portion of nearby John Street into bioswale and more p-patches as well as a handful of other Capitol Hill area projects detailed below. The $207,000 grant request for the Summit/John project will one of dozens of projects across the city on the table for discussion at Monday night’s Seattle Pro Parks Levy Opportunity Fund public hearing at Miller Community Center.

Other Capitol Hill area projects that ranked lower in the process but are still being considered for funding are a proposed park at 19th and Madison, a James Court woonerf (yay! woonerf!) and a project involving an overhaul of the McGilvra green space we wrote about there. Meanwhile, a $400,000 project to rehab the Volunteer Park conservatory greenhouse and a $1.1 million proposal to overhaul the park’s landscaping in advance of its centennial ranked low and are unlikely to be funded. Here’s a PDF of the draft project list for the 2010 Opportunity Fund process.

Here’s the statement from the Capitol Hill Community Council about Monday night’s meeting. The Council has driven the plan to extend the park space and transform half of the nearby stretch of John into a pedestrian area connecting East Olive Way and Starbucks to the park.

John and Summit Application to the Opportunity Fund
During the summer, Chris Hoffman put together a great application to the Opportunity Fund for a John St. extension of John and Summit Park. Our application proposed converting the half of John St. closest to the park into a bioswale and more P-Patches, i.e. taking car space and turning it into green space. We proposed doing this only half of John St. in order to allow utilities and emergency access on the remaining half of the street and to save us time and trouble with extra permitting.

We recently found out that our application is #2 on the draft final list of Opportunity Fund Projects! This still means we have a very, very good chance of getting the extension funded. You can help John and Summit get this money by coming to the public hearing on the Opp. Fund Draft Final list on October 25th:

• Time: Public Hearing starts at 7:00 pm
  (sign-up sheets available at 6:00 pm)
• Location: Miller Community Center
  330 19th Ave E, Seattle WA 98112
• Final project recommendations will be made by the Oversight Committee to the Parks Superintendent on December 6th, 2010.

Hope to see you on the 25th!
~ Jen Power
UP/Open Space Committee Chair